Panasonic Factory Solutions Co., Ltd., a business unit of Panasonic Corporation, announces today the opening of their “Plasma Dicing Demonstration Center” in Osaka, Japan. The center is established to promote a new plasma dicing process to dice silicon wafers thinned to 25μm, which is half the thickness of current memory products.

The center’s clean room is showcasing a vertically integrated processing and inspection equipment dedicated for supporting the plasma dicing process. The one-stop process center eliminates the need for the customer to conduct wafer sample preparation at multiple sites and ensuring protection of their highly confidential information.

The center provides the capability to develop processes for new wafer structures and materials. Panasonic will utilize this center as a development site for plasma dicing technology.

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Background

To facilitate the IoT, thinner and smaller semiconductor chips are required which bring major impact to conventional manufacturing. Especially in the blade dicing methods, there are mechanical damage challenges such as edge chipping and side wall damage during mechanical dicing. As chip size decrease, blade width have a greater impact on chip yield per wafer. In addition, the mechanical dicing method leaves mechanical residue and requiring water cleaning steps; a detriment to image sensors. There are well-known challenges and principle limitations on blade dicing methods. For those reasons, there is a growing expectation to refine the plasma dicing process.

About plasma dicing technology

Plasma dicing technology is non contact process via plasma reaction to dice chips without damage. It enables narrow-width processing which increases yield of harvested chips from a wafer. Furthermore, plasma dicing does not leave mechanical residue on wafers. It is a method solving dicing challenges for the future.

Blade dicing

Mechanical contact processing

Plasma dicing

Non contact processing by chemical reaction

Features of plasma dicing

Plasma dicing features:

(1)Damage free Plasma dicing is a noncontact process by chemical reaction so it will not cause mechanical damage to the wafer. [Examples of application area] Memory, Image sensor

(3)Plasma dicing do not leave mechanical residue on wafer Mechanical residue after mechanical dicing is the major contributor for image sensor failure and other MEMS devices. Plasma dicing method is clean and do not require post water cleaning steps. [Examples of application area] Image sensor